


careful fear & dead devotion

by therm0dynamics



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, M/M, Shaving, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 11:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13833729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therm0dynamics/pseuds/therm0dynamics
Summary: Laszlo says nothing but inclines his chin, baring a slight inch of his neck. It is a testament to how pathetically attuned to Laszlo he is that John knows what is being asked of him.





	careful fear & dead devotion

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t know anything about period dramas but MAN do i love character studies and being fake deep. based on the show. takes place between or during any given episode(s). no spoilers. warning for some knives and some blood. title courtesy of the national.

John follows Laszlo’s calling voice back and through that great cavernous warren of a residence and finds him in the bathroom, staring into the mirror set atop the washstand, holding an unfolded straight razor against the side of his neck.

The light slanting in from the narrow window casts just the wrong shadow on Laszlo’s face, and John’s heart slips a beat as for a wrenching moment he thinks that Laszlo has done something terrible — is about to do something terrible.

“Laszlo — !” John cries, reaching out with an aborted movement, at the same time Laszlo says, “ah, John, you’re here.”

Laszlo shifts his gaze and looks sidelong at John. He’s wearing one of those sly amused calculating expressions that says John’s brief lapse went neither unnoticed nor uncategorized in that prismatic mind of his, to be reforged into something vicious and turned back upon John when he least expects it and is thus most vulnerable to it. 

John clenches his outstretched hand into a fist and drops it by his side, feeling almost ashamed of himself. Surely, he should know better by now.

“Why did you call me here, Laszlo?” he asks tiredly.

Laszlo turns neatly on his heel and offers the razor to him. Blade first. The steel glints like gold in the haze of late-afternoon light that suffuses the bathroom. John stares at it, struck mute for a moment.

For a man with such soft features, such a refined manner, it is disturbing how _right_ Laszlo looks with a knife in hand. It is the harmony of two objects with a shared disposition and purposes aligned — to search for unguarded openings, soft spots and weaknesses — to dissect, to extract, to eviscerate. Though, John thinks, there is no damage Laszlo can do with a sliver of wood and steel that he cannot do better with his clever, mocking tongue.

Laszlo says nothing but inclines his chin, baring a slight inch of his neck. It is a testament to how pathetically attuned to Laszlo he is that John knows what is being asked of him. 

“You called me over just for this?” John hisses, though he’s already reaching out and plucking the knife from Laszlo’s hand. Sometimes he feels like he’s a lifelong experiment in how much casual cruelty one person can bear before they start to welcome it. “Where are Mary and Cyrus?”

“Out.”

“Out,” John repeats, trying and failing to summon them back _in_ by sheer force of will. That foolish overeager need to please itches in his fingers. It’s a feeling that only seems to arise when he is around Laszlo. He pensively runs the cutting edge of the razor over his thumb, imagines a slip of the hand, his skin sliced open, the bloody prints he would leave behind. What might Detective Sergeants Issacson and Issacson be able to read from them? A lifetime of futile wanting, maybe. A lifetime of striving, still awaiting repayment.

He casts about for the razor strop and finds it hanging from a hook by the mirror. He reaches out for it, pulls the strip of leather to him, draws the razor up and across it, over and over and over. The blade glints and flashes in the light, brilliant, blinding.

“Are you quite sure you trust me not to cut your throat?” John asks.

“I trust your hands are steady,” Laszlo replies, which gives John pause. Lately his hands have been anything but steady, with too much drink or too little, with fear, paranoia, the visions that descend upon him at night. Children with festering voids for eyes, blood-warm ink-dark water seeping up through the cobblestoned streets of the city, misshapen things stirring in the mud of the riverbed. 

But that is just who Laszlo is, the brightest light that casts the darkest shadow, and John has never, never been able to refuse Laszlo anything. If John spills Laszlo’s blood in a bid to prove his loyalty, his use, then it will be an end Laszlo has brought upon himself.

He tests the blade on his skin again and finds it sufficient, and turns around to find Laszlo thumbing at the top button of his shirt.

“Here. Let me,” John says, reaching out for him again. He dips his head as he slowly bares Laszlo’s skin, inches at a time. His eyes compulsively skitter across the line of Laszlo’s throat, the dip of his collarbone, the curve of his chest, the odd twist of his bad arm. John hadn’t really noticed how delicate, almost beautiful, Laszlo is under all those layers of wool and starched linen. And he burns with heat, too, as if at his core Laszlo is not a man but a branding iron, a blazing star.

When he undoes the last button, Laszlo shrugs smoothly out of his shirt and deposits it in a pile on a nearby footstool. John heaves a sigh in spite of himself.

“Mary will have a fit if that wrinkles,” he says, and bends down to fold it for him. It’s not until he’s looking away that he realizes how much he wants to keep staring. He’s never been allowed so close before, and now that he has, he’s afraid he’ll never be allowed again. But then he feels Laszlo’s eyes on _him_ — on the back of his head, the side of his neck, the space between his shoulder blades.

He straightens up, only to have Laszlo catch him around the wrist. John flinches back, but Laszlo tightens his grip briefly, and John stills on that command. He one-handedly works out John’s cufflinks, first on one sleeve, then the other, slipping them neatly into the pocket of his pants.

“You should cuff your sleeves,” Laszlo says. John obeys, resisting the urge to scratch at his skin everywhere he feels the residual pressure of Laszlo’s fingers. He nudges Laszlo aside, finds the shaving brush and the dish of soap, dips his fingers into the wash basin. The water is jarringly cold. His hands are trembling minutely.

“Come — ” John says, and clears his throat because his voice is unsteady, too. “Come here.”

John lathers up the brush and sweeps it over Laszlo’s face, the line of his jaw, his neck. He picks up the razor and it is heavy in his hand, grounding, and somehow so cold despite the heat of the room.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Are _you,_ John?” Laszlo asks, with his characteristic contrariness. “You have the choice to deny me.” 

“Do I?” John murmurs, more to himself than to Laszlo. Before Laszlo can answer him, John steps in practically chest-to-chest against him, braces his free arm on Laszlo’s good shoulder and gently spreads his fingers around Laszlo’s head, and raises the blade.

He draws a breath, passes the razor down from cheekbone to jawbone, a clean, sharp line through the lather, and almost startles as he and Laszlo both breathe out at the same time. He hadn’t realized Laszlo had been holding his breath.

“Not so bad,” John says. Laszlo quirks the smallest smile in response and something in John settles. 

He crowds in even closer. Another pass with the blade, a dip in the water to clean it off, another pass, another soft whisper of water against steel. He falls into a steady, soothing rhythm that he almost doesn’t have to think about except that he is still crackling with the knowledge that this is _Laszlo_ beneath him. Laszlo, who trusted him to do this. John suppresses the urge to shiver. The sunlight filtering through the glass is nothing compared to Laszlo Kreizler, and though John is not cold, he greedily soaks in the solid, feverish heat from the body pressed up against his like a man dying for warmth.

John gently tips Laszlo’s chin up and shifts his fingers so they’re cupped around the back of Laszlo’s head, threaded into his silken hair. He swirls the blade through water again and holds it flat to his own bare wrist for a second, to warm the metal. He adjusts his grip on the handle and takes a breath.

“Hold … still,” John says, even though Laszlo is motionless as a statue. The world around him seems frozen in place, too, the air honey-golden and viscous, the noise of the street fading away, even the dust motes hanging suspended.

The first pass down Laszlo’s neck is excruciatingly slow, and standing so closely against each other as they are, John feels Laszlo’s heartrate jump up. When he draws back he finds Laszlo’s eyes are half-closed as if inebriated, and he is drawing shallow, careful breaths through his mouth. He’s fidgeting almost imperceptibly, but John sees the shift of Laszlo’s muscles under his skin.

“Are you … scared?” John asks incredulously. He hadn’t considered Laszlo capable of the emotion, but if it isn’t _fear_ in his eyes, then what is it?

“Of you? Of course not,” Laszlo says, but he says it quietly, on an outward breath, and instead of coming out snappish as he probably intended, it just sounds helpless. “Are y — ”

“Yes. I am,” John says, through gritted teeth. Laszlo fixes him with that considering look again, coy and secret from beneath his lashes, but John means it less about how he’s a hairsbreadth away from bleeding Laszlo out in seconds, and more about how heady and seductive it is having this much power held between his fingers. The thought burns, slick and dark and warm, in the pit of his belly, intoxicating. He could get used to this, John thinks.  _That's_ what scares him.

He passes the blade down, down, unyieldingly down the hard lines of Laszlo’s throat, watching the artery in Laszlo’s neck jumping steadily. The dead boys had probably trusted their killer, just like this. Could he do it? Could he just turn his wrist in a scant sixteenth-inch and commit that irreversible, unforgivable act? Laszlo swallows, his throat working against the blade. No, John decides, he can’t. But is he saying that only because it’s Laszlo here with him? But if it were someone anonymous, a face picked off the street — 

John looks to the left, examines himself in the mirror, and wonders how he can look so outwardly unaffected when inside he’s suffused with it, with proximity, heat, touch, permission and control, the blade in his hand, the insidious thread of bloodlust creeping through his veins, the golden light, the glinting metal —

Laszlo suddenly meets his eyes in the mirror. John startles, and swears, and his hand slips.

Blood wells up immediately from the small, shallow cut right under the curve of Laszlo’s jaw, _not fatal thank God_ , and without thinking John immediately closes his eyes and leans in, presses his lips to it, laves his tongue to the wound. The razor clatters to the tile of the bathroom floor, and Laszlo draws in a sharp, unsteady breath. John thinks he might taste metal, salt, whatever brilliant relentless fire Laszlo’s got running through his veins.

John leans back when he feels Laszlo pushing against his shoulder. Laszlo’s eyes are wide and shocked, but John feels little victory in it. He feels terrified, mainly, that for his weakness, this transgression, Laszlo is going to flay him alive and cast him out.

But instead, Laszlo raises his hand and traces his thumb over John’s lips, spiders his fingers over John’s forehead, his eyelids, back through his hair, and with no small wonder he realizes it’s Laszlo’s hand that is trembling.

They’re pressed together knee-to-chest now against the wall, John’s legs bracketing Laszlo’s hips, and he knows — he can _feel —_ that Laszlo has not been unaffected. Laszlo’s expression betrays him. There’s something in his eyes he would never ask for, would never admit to even wanting.

And John, this lifelong experiment in devotion all paid off in this one moment, just smiles and goes to his knees before Laszlo. He has knelt for this man so many times for this man in the past. To button his boots. To fold his shirts. To huddle on the ground over a dead child’s body, immortalizing countless horrors he can hardly bear. The light through the window casts a halo-like radiance around Laszlo, and John presses up against him but still beneath him, in the darkness, where he belongs.

“John?”

“Laszlo, Laszlo, you trust me, don’t you,” John says, a statement, not a question. "Let me."

And Laszlo leans back and _lets._ In the space between one breath and the next, John feels the beat of his heart in his ears, his hands resting on Laszlo’s thighs, Laszlo’s fingers around the back of his neck. The brightest light. The darkest shadow. Steady, steady, steady, holding steady.

**Author's Note:**

> in summary these two have hella issues to work out, the end. hope you all enjoyed this, and please let me know what you think!


End file.
